The Cleveland Cavaliers fell 2 games short of being world champions last season. The team cruised through the regular season being led by LeBron, receiving big games from Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love and timely baskets from role players like J.R. Smith, Iman Shumpert and James Jones but things changed during the playoffs. Kevin Love was injured versus the Boston Celtics during round 1 of the playoffs. The team was able to overcome the loss of Love but weren’t so successful after losing Kyrie Irving during Game 1 of the Finals. The role players struggled when the bright lights were on causing several brilliant performances from LeBron to be over shadowed by the more complete team in the Golden State Warriors.
The Cavs have been focused on re-signing their statr players and keeping the core together. LeBron, Kevin Love and Iman Shumpert have all inked their contracts and Tristan Thompson is expected to follow although it’s been reported the two have hit a snag in negotiations. Cavs added LeBron’s former teammate and veteran guard Moe Williams which left Lebron pleased yet not satisfying.
“It’s been good so far, but we have a lot of work to do,” said James when asked about the Cavs’ offseason. “We still got to re-sign Tristan [Thompson]. Hopefully we can bring back J.R. [Smith] as well and see if there’s some other free agents out there that’d love to come here and play if we’re able to do that.
“We definitely don’t want to come back the same team. We want to come back better. But right now, we’ve been doing so far, so good.”
The team has been linked to trade rumors involving Brendan Haywood with hopes of acquiring another scoring option off the bench. The Clippers were interested in traded Jamal Crawford with hopes of receiving a big man prior to DeAndre Jordan breaking his agreement with the Mavericks to return back to L.A. We all know player/GM LeBron James gets what he wants and the Cavs management will do anything to keep him happy knowing that he can opt-out of his new contract after 1 season. The Cavs don’t need a big named player but I do think they will make another small move to add another role player before the season starts.
HT: CBSSPORTS
